


an emptiness that consumes you

by ubik



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Alcoholism, Mental Health Issues, Other, POV Second Person, rick and beth are both supposed to have bpd in this fic though it's only briefly referenced
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 17:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6966499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ubik/pseuds/ubik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Age 12. The year your father left. How could you think of it as anything else? In later years, you would cleverly begin to shift the blame onto your mother, but in the beginning you cannot escape the truth (and you have always known that it was the truth): your father left because of you.</p><p>Why else would he have left? Was it your mother? Was it you? Was it the fact that there’s something wrong with him, something like a disease that pushes him to run far away from anyone who ever has or ever will love him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	an emptiness that consumes you

Age 5. You are sitting on a stool next to your father and he is showing you the entire world. No, more than then that. He is showing you the entire galaxy, the entire universe. Colours are reflecting off of his face and onto yours as he spins the three dimensional model in his hands.

You have always loved spending time with your father in his workshop, watching his hands spin expertly in a blur of shiny tools and strange colourful liquids that are more exciting to your young eyes than any children’s show your mother can put in front of you.

You spend nearly all your time with your father. He builds you endless toys and machines, their only purpose to entertain you. For your birthday he builds you a machine that creates ice cream out of thin air. For Christmas, a pet robot dog.

Your mother shakes her head at your father’s inventions, forehead wrinkling and lips curling downward and you cannot understand why. Your mother carefully dismantles your father’s toys and machines when he is not around and she ignores your cries and protests.

Your parents argue and you watch, paralyzed with fear and hidden carefully behind the couch. Your mother is yelling and your father is yelling and you do not know what they are saying, but you feel scared and alone. You curl your little hands into fists and watch your parents’ shadows that stretch out onto the hall from the kitchen, twisting into unrecognizable forms. You think that they look like one of Dad’s aliens.

Or monsters.

…

Age 12. The year your father left. How could you think of it as anything else? In later years, you would cleverly begin to shift the blame onto your mother, but in the beginning you cannot escape the truth (and you have always known that it was the truth): your father left because of you.

When you are an adult, you will see a therapist who will tell you that children believe everything is their fault because they have a limited ability to perceive the world. You will think she’s full of shit. You begin to think everyone is full of shit.

Why else would he have left? Was it your mother? Was it you? Was it the fact that there’s something wrong with him, something like a disease that pushes him to run far away from anyone who ever has or ever will love him?

You hate you father, at first. Hate the way he used to drink. The way he used to make Mom yell at him, and you would hide quietly in your room, curled into a ball just like when you were five years old, turning the volume on your CD player all the way up. You hate the fact that the next morning he would ruffle your hair and call you ‘sweetie’ and treat you extra gentle, like you’re made of glass. You hate the fact that with jokes and presents and laughter and smiles he tried to erase your memory of the night before, tried to make you love him.

You hate the fact that you did love him.

…

Age 15. You begin to think that maybe if you can be _enough_ – smart enough, funny enough, successful enough, talented enough, anything enough – your father will return. It sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. Your father, whatever distant universe he’s in, is not going to come running back to boring old Earth because Beth Sanchez got straight A’s on her report card.

But it doesn’t stop you from trying.

…

Age 17. This is the year you start drinking. The year it all falls apart. The year you met that awful boy, Jerry. The year he knocked you up. You quit drinking for nine entire months so the baby could have a better life.

Better, because yours is now worse. Better, because now you will become a vet instead of doctor, better, because you will now have to go to school in the state where your family lives.

Better, because your life is over. A new one has started at the expense of yours.

…

Age 22. You are trapped in a loveless marriage with an idiot husband and a child you secretly resent and a second one, who was the final nail in the coffin of your hated life. You are trapped in an unfulfilling job, in a house you hate in a community you hate in a city you hate.

You are trapped, and unlike your father, you have nowhere to run.

…

Age 29. You seek help. You see a psychiatrist who squints at you from behind a notepad and says you have something called “Borderline Personality Disorder.” He tells you fearing abandonment is one of the symptoms.

You never see him again.

You see a string of therapists, some who spend endless hours asking invasive questions about your childhood, others who eschew childhood altogether, insisting you have a purely chemical problem.

You don’t know what’s wrong with you, only that it eats at you the same way you imagine it ate at your father. You feel an emptiness that consumes you from within like a black hole, and you drink to fill the void. Summer cracks a joke about you being a Wine Mom, and you google the signs of alcoholism. And you cry, silently, as your body slides down the cabinets and onto the kitchen floor, covering your sobs with your hand.

…

Age 34. Your father returns. No explanation, no apology. He ruffles your hair and calls you ‘sweetie’ and compliments how you cook your eggs like you are twelve years old and it’s the morning after a fight with Mom. You try, with all the strength in you, to find it in yourself to reject his unspoken apology, to hate him.

But you are not that strong.

You let your father back into your life with a smile and open arms and you can’t help but think that goddamn it, you are so fucking stupid.

Your father spends more time with your son then you, and you’d be lying if you said you weren’t just a little bit jealous. But you bite your tongue and swallow all the bitter remarks inside of you.

Your father has returned. And you’re making damned sure he’s never leaving again.

**Author's Note:**

> this story is loosely based on my own experiences of having bpd, issues with alcohol abuse and my relationship with my father. thanks to my sister for encouraging me to write and post this!


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